Biblion Bible Commentary
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His Hand Is Stretched Out Still
Isaiah 9:8-21
8 The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it falls on Israel. · WEB
A nation answers disaster with a building program, and the refrain at the end of each stanza refuses to close.
The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it falls on Israel Isaiah 9:8.
A poem in four stanzas, each ending with the same line, and the subject is the northern kingdom in its last years.
"The bricks have fallen, but we will build with cut stone. The sycamore fig trees have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place" Isaiah 9:10.
The quoted response to a first blow, and it is the most recognizable sentence in the chapter. Mud brick and sycamore are cheap; dressed stone and cedar are expensive. The nation's answer to being struck is to rebuild better than before, and to say so publicly.
Nothing in the reply is a lie. They probably did rebuild, and the buildings were probably finer. What the poem identifies as the failure is stated two verses later: the people have not turned to him who struck them, neither have they sought Yahweh of Armies Isaiah 9:13. Resilience is being described as the problem, because it made the question unnecessary.
Yahweh will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed, in one day Isaiah 9:14.
And then the poem explains its own metaphor, which prophecy rarely does: the elder and the honorable man is the head, and the prophet who teaches lies is the tail Isaiah 9:15. Top and bottom of the society, and the tail is a false prophet — the man whose trade is telling people the rebuilding will hold.
For those who lead this people lead them astray; and those who are led by them are destroyed Isaiah 9:16.
Both halves are judged. Being misled is not offered as a defense, and the leaders are not offered as the only culprits.
Therefore the Lord will not rejoice over their young men, neither will he have compassion on their fatherless and widows Isaiah 9:17.
The hardest line in the chapter, since the fatherless and the widow are the two groups this book insists on protecting. The reason given is that the categories have stopped meaning anything — everyone is profane and an evildoer — which is what the poem is claiming has happened to the whole society.
For wickedness burns like a fire. It devours the briers and thorns; yes, it kindles in the thickets of the forest Isaiah 9:18.
The fire here is not sent. Wickedness is described as combusting on its own, starting in the scrub and reaching the timber, and the people are the fuel for the fire Isaiah 9:19.
Manasseh eating Ephraim and Ephraim eating Manasseh, and they together will be against Judah Isaiah 9:21.
The two halves of Joseph's family turning on each other and then combining against their southern relatives. The image a verse earlier is of a man eating his own arm — a society consuming the parts of itself it needs.
For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
The refrain closes all four stanzas and continues into the next chapter. It reads two ways and the Hebrew allows both: a hand raised to strike again, and a hand still held out. The poem never says which, and the ambiguity is the only thing in it that is not bleak.
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